"dot-com name",URL, or domain.  However you hear it or whatever you choose to call it, it's the cornerstone of your online presence.

A domain should be part of your brand and your marketing plan.  It’s not just a catchy name you type in, but it will uniquely identify you and your business and it will help establish you on the web.  A domain name is also used to personalize the emails for business or personal reasons.  You can create multiple email addresses, such as sales@guessmydomain.com or billing@guessmydomain.com.

A lot goes into picking a domain name.  Businesses spend a lot of time doing the research and finally it’s narrowed down to a handful of domains.  The next questions are, “Is the domain available?”, “Does your competitor own the domain?”, and “How do you find out who owns the domain or what the price for it will be?”

Check Availability:

• Domain names are purchased from third-party hosting sites.
• A domain name can only be registered to one person at any one time.  So make sure when you are tossing around domain name ideas, have a few in mind in case the one you wanted has been taken.
• You can check the availability of a domain by going here, https://register.isoc.net/whois.php.
• Note:  You can reserve a domain name without having immediate plans to put up a Web site.  So if you have some domain names in mind and they are available, get them purchased and reserved while you still can.

Register the Domain Name:

• The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the organization responsible for all domains.  (http://www.icann.org/) .  But you can't actually go directly through them to register your domain name.  You would have to go through an accredited domain name registrar or partner site.
• Always use a reputable Registrar!  Registrars are companies that are accredited by ICANN to register Internet domain names.  These companies are often web hosting companies who offer a range of website-related services.
• Visit the Registrar’s website and follow their steps to purchase your domain.
• Register the domain name to you or your business, rather than the hosting company or someone else.
• Each domain comes with an expiration date, and must be renewed by the owner, or else it becomes up for grabs.
• Public WHOIS:  When you register a domain; your name, address, phone number and email address is exposed everyday to anyone.  
• Private WHOIS:  For a small fee the Registrar can set your domain to be private, in which your contact information cannot be seen to everyone.
• *Tip:  I would recommend that you register your domain with three main extensions; .com, net, and .org.  This keeps them out of the hand of your competition.  Think about it, you have guessmydomain.com, and your competitor purchased guessmydomain.net, you may have the advantage since you have the extension “.com”, but there will be those prospects you could lose, because they entered “.net” and go to your competitors site first.

Managing all of your domain names:

• It may sound like a hassle in the beginning, but for security reasons, it will keep someone from sending changes to your domain.  Keep a running list
  :
  • Domain name(s)
  • Date of registration
  • Registrar’s name and contact information
  • The email address associated with the domain(s)
  • The username and password associated with the domain(s)
     

Now that your domain name is set-up and registered, the next steps you need to tackle is where and how to get your domain hosted, creating email addresses and getting your web pages loaded.